Redemption
by JRastelliAuthor
Summary: A story of loss and overcoming it. R&R
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: the characters are not mine**

Chapter One

 _"There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds."- Laurell K. Hamilton_

She was fierce, strong, and beautiful, he thought as he watched her break down. She was wondrous to watch, a true sight to behold in the depths of her grief. She had held out long as she could, he knew, but he also knew that there was only so much a person could take no matter how strong. Wounds this emotional were difficult to handle no matter the age you were, or circumstance, or even how much time had passed, and many times so much more devastating than a knife or a bullet wound.

He watched the love of his life as she railed at the world, as her world crumbled around her. He watched as she mourned _him_ , as though the love and devotion he himself had shown her were inconsequential. He could feel no pain over that, no jealousy or regret. His choices, his personal decisions landed him in this position. He felt only the bone deep pain that came with knowing there was nothing you could do to make it better, to make the wounds heal faster. Nothing you could do to help her heal emotionally.

It was beyond difficult to watch as she broke down. As she cried over her loss, and keening sobs escaped her wracking frame. She was rocking back and forth, and all he could do was sit next to her and hold her as much as she would allow. She was independent, and she would hate that he was here to even witness this.

He waited her out, and it was several hours before she calmed. He handed her a bottle of water and she drank it gratefully.

"Why did it have to be him?" she finally asked him, as her sobs quieted. "Why couldn't this have happened to someone else?"

He didn't know the answer to that question, and as he pondered how best to answer her, he stroked his hand down her arm. It was comforting to him to know that she still wanted him to be there, that the first words out of her mouth hadn't been "I want you to leave." They very well could have been with the way he had acted before. He had been callous and uncomfortable with the way he behaved even as he did it. He knew what he had said, what he had done was wrong. It didn't change the fact it had happened, and now he had to deal with it.

"I don't know, Stephanie. I truly don't. It shouldn't have happened to him. It should have been someone else, even me. God knows that he never deserved it. _You_ didn't deserve it after everything else you have been through the past two years."

She had been through the wringer the past two years, since he had walked out of her life without a backward glance. At least he had wanted it to seem like there hadn't been a backwards glance. There had been, but he would never have let her know it until now. In the past two years he had kept tabs on her loosely, and it seemed like every time he found out some bit of news about her it was horrible.

First, barely a week after he let her go, her Grandma Mazur had died. That woman had been the guiding light for Stephanie. She was her biggest supporter, and the world was better place for having known Edna Mazur. Stephanie had been so close to Edna that everyone who knew Stephanie ended up knowing something about her grandmother, and although many of the stories were crazy - because the older woman was crazy - it had been the good kind. The woman had been a hoot, and Stephanie was devastated at the loss.

About eight months after Edna passed away, Stephanie's entire family got into a car accident on a trip to Disney. Her sister Valerie, brother-in-law Albert, their four daughters, and her parents had all been gravely injured. Stephanie had to make a life altering and heartbreaking decision for everyone. While Albert, Valerie, and Stephanie's mother Helen had passed away immediately upon impact, her father Frank and her four nieces were all in critical condition. She had had to pull the plug on two of her nieces, and the other two went to live with Albert's mother.

Frank had survived. He was in a nursing care facility because of the damage to his legs. He was able to get around fairly well on a single level, but the old Plum house was not ideal for his new injuries. So Stephanie had moved her father into a care facility and facilitated the sale of the Plum house. Watching as someone else bought the home she had grown up in, that her family had been in for her entire life… for someone like Stephanie that had to be wretched.

No matter her relationship with her mother and sister, he knew their deaths had hit her hard. She was a family oriented person, regardless of how much she denied it. How much she insisted she was not interested in a family, in raising the next generation. No matter how much she complained about her mother and how Helen nagged, or compared her to other women, Stephanie had love for her mother. Same with Valerie, although Stephanie frequently had felt inferior to the woman, because of how she followed in their mothers footsteps.

That wasn't Stephanie.

Perhaps, he thought, the biggest tragedy of the past two years was the one that Stephanie had born silently. She had married _him_ and within a few months they had announced they were expecting a child. Unfortunately, Stephanie had gone into labor way too early and the baby had been stillborn at twenty-three weeks gestation. Although she had always insisted she was not mother material, she had loved that child, he knew with absolute certainty. So far as he knew, Stephanie never talked about what had happened to the child she had born. She never spoke of the loss, as though it had never occurred. She was unwilling, or unable, to cope with the community's sympathies. She walked away from anyone who even brought the incident up.

Now, this. No, it was not a good year for Stephanie.

He didn't know how to help her, only that he must. That if nothing else, he must stand by her through this newest tragedy. She didn't have anyone else, anymore. Not anyone close enough. Her so-called friends had all abandoned her in the midst of her overwhelming depression and grief, and he felt badly that he had been one of them, for his own purely selfish reasons.

It was time to be a man, to be _the_ man she needed right then.

 **A/N: This is not going to be the most comfortable story. In fact, I have debated for months whether or not to post this first chapter (I never got any further, because I didn't want to publish something this... well, this). However, I think it is finally time to give this some voice. I want it to delve into the losses that Stephanie experienced, the different ways she might grieve each situation, and the love of a friend/former lover that can bring her some peace eventually. I'm sure many of you know that October is stillborn/pregnancy loss month. It's not comfortable, its not pleasant, and in this month, I decided it was time to share this. As many of you know, I am 1 in 4. I had a miscarriage. It was horrible. It clouded my entire pregnancy with my twins - who I am so thankful for. They turn 1 at the end of this month. When I first found out I was pregnant with them I was fearful and ecstatic. When I went for my first visit, I was fearful. No heartbeats. They told me I had less than 30% chance of either twin making it. In fact, my younger twin they said was not viable at all. I later found out they based this on the growth of the sacs, the heartbeats not being there, and the triplet that was already being reabsorbed. I had first trimester bleeding for eight or nine weeks. It was terrifying. But they are one. And they were born in the month that honors babies like their sister, and the stillborn that Stephanie has in this story. So this story is dedicated to all the babies that were born sleeping, gone too soon, the ones we never got to hold. 3**

 **P.S. I haven't designated this as a Cupcake or a Babe because I am not sure where I want it to go.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: They're not mine**

 **A/N1: Thanks for the kind reviews! I'm going to go ahead and post chapter two since I have it written!**

Chapter Two

 _"Here is one of the worst things about having someone you love die: it happens again every morning."- Anna Quindlen_

Every morning she awoke feeling like something was not quite right. Within a heartbeat, she remembered that nothing was or ever would be again. It was like the all-encompassing agony only went away for the hours in which she slept, and when she woke again, it felt like a little more of her soul died with the remembering.

She had lost most everything, everyone. At first she had been able to cope okay. The life changes she had dealt with, from him walking away one day, saying "I can't do this anymore" to the loss of Grandma Mazur. Those were tolerable, although they hurt unlike anything she had experienced to that point. No, what was truly traumatizing was what came after that.

As close as she was to Grandma Mazur, she felt that she would have been happy with how she exited the world. They'd kept a close lid on it, but Grandma died in the midst of pleasure - self-induced pleasure, but it was pleasure nonetheless. Grandma would have loved for the entire 'Burg to know that, but Helen Plum refused to tell them. It had been uncomfortable enough discovering a 78-year-old woman in bed at noon, with a vibrator still vibrating inside of her intimate places. Stephanie had laughed, but then she hadn't had to take care of the, well, clean-up.

No, the trauma came after that. Like a series of bad plays, Stephanie had watched her family die. All except two nieces she didn't see, and her father whom had changed right in front of her. She had never considered her father to be a hard man, perhaps emotionally detached and mildly self-absorbed. After the accident, though, and the loss of the use of his legs he became especially hard. Unyielding in the face of his tragedy, and unwilling to succumb to the loss he must have felt. Stephanie couldn't imagine losing an adult child, two grandchildren, and your wife of almost forty years plus the use of your legs in one go.

Stephanie had grabbed onto the man in her life, the one who had stayed and stuck by her, and she had made him understand what she felt. How she needed him, and shortly thereafter they got married. Not long after that, she had found out she was pregnant. The terror that she had felt, it was unreal. She knew she wasn't exactly mother material; she'd made changes to her life but her job was still dangerous. She forgot to feed herself, let alone a child. Granted, her new husband made sure she ate at least twice a day, but she felt wholly unqualified to bring life into the world, and even questioned herself repeatedly. She'd even considered termination at one point - for a half a second, but that is what made her feel most guilty.

Despite doing everything within her power to love her body, to love her child, to take care of herself and her developing baby, Stephanie still failed. No matter how many psychiatrists, therapists, psychologists she saw, she would always see the early birth of her stillborn son as her failure. She didn't bother going to the support groups, and for the first six weeks after Michael James Manoso was born sleeping, she barely got out of bed.

She spent six weeks lying in between the covers of the big bed on Haywood, with silent tears coursing down her cheeks. She screamed into her pillows and she wouldn't talk to even her husband, Carlos. It seemed wrong, because all she wanted to do was apologize to him… and all he did was get angry when she did. It was his way of coping, of handling the loss of a child he was ready to welcome. A child he wanted, not one he would only owe a financial obligation to.

No, six months after the death of her son, Stephanie still blamed herself. She still felt the loss of Michael acutely, as though it had happened yesterday instead of six months ago. She woke up, and every day she wished she hadn't to some degree.

Perhaps if her mother had still been alive, or her sister… someone she could talk to about what she was feeling, what she was going through. She had no one, though. Her father couldn't bear to look at her - the reminder of the wife and daughter he had already lost was too much for him and he lashed out every time she came by. She stood tall and proud every time she left her home, but the moments she was alone her walls crumbled down and she felt… she felt everything.

Eventually, she started to function again. It was probably two months after Michael's burial that she managed to get out of bed and get through a day. Then little by little she ventured out, and she became almost human. She talked to Carlos, he talked to her. They came to some conclusions about the emotional upheaval she had experienced, and his own inability to process deeper emotions like the loss. He had to compartmentalize it to the point he almost never thought about it.

Then, Carlos was gunned down on a routine takedown. The man who had survived third world countries, torture, and more dangerous situations than a simple pick up was gunned down by a kid who was left with an unlocked weapon. A seven-year-old child accidentally shot her husband, and her world was altered yet again.

She had called the only person she could think of who would understand what she might need. To his credit, he came right away. He'd moved to Baltimore when he walked away, and he drove up from there with his dog and a suitcase just to hold her while she sobbed. He was the best friend she had for that situation, no matter that he hadn't seen her in two years. He wouldn't give her empty platitudes and useless words. He would understand what she needed, because he had done it so many times before. As her friend, as her boyfriend, as a lover… he was there for her.

There had been many things that she had disliked about her time with Joseph Morelli, and there were many things that he had not been able to provide her with. There had been stupid arguments, and break ups over idiotic things. He was a great friend, though, and right then she truly needed that.

She needed her friend.

 **A/N2: If you have read this far, thank you! I want to assure you that I have no plans to make this a romantic story. So while yes, it does feature Morelli very prominently, I don't think that a romantic relationship will be the focal point. More, the growth and the overcoming of grief, and the love and support of a friend trying to quite literally redeem himself (and herself) from the actions of their past.**

 **That might change, but right this moment that is the goal.**


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer: Characters primarily belong to JE**

Chapter Three

 _"People are lonely because they build walls instead of bridges."- Joseph F. Newton Men_

 _"Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in a marriage or in friendship, is communication." - Oscar Wilde_

The walls between them were great, but he was determined to conquer them. She had spent so much of her time guarded around him, unable to be who she was because of how he acted. His anger, his fear, his jealousy - it all overrode the love he held for her then, and he was determined not to let it do the same now.

It was not that he expected or even wanted to be in a relationship with her. It was too soon, and probably too late for that. He wanted to be in friendship with her, the type of friendship that she deserved. One in which their differences were talked about, in which the cornerstone of their time together was communication.

They'd always had issues with communication. In his anger, in his fear, his method of communication was laying blame and yelling at her. He hadn't even seen fit to do it in the presence of their home, instead in public. That's not how friendship should work, and as an adult he ought to have known that. He was ashamed of his past actions, and determined to do right by Stephanie now. He did everything he possibly could to help her.

Stephanie was not in a position to be a wonderful friend to anyone just then. Instead, she needed the support and love from the friends she already had, the relationships she had cultivated throughout the years of her lifetime. Her best friend, Mary Lou, didn't understand what it was to experience great loss. Neither did Joe, but he had been witness to some truly horrific and tragic situations and scenes over the past decade in law enforcement. He had had to deliver the bad news more times than he cared for, and he had had to hold more hands and hug more grieving family members than he felt comfortable with.

This was the first time in which he had been there beyond the beginning. This was the first time he had dealt in depth with grief.

Holding Stephanie as she said goodbye to her husband the final time, Joe felt sorrow. He felt gutted, even. He watched her stoically greet mourners; the members of Ranger's security firm, some of the men and women he had served with, and his parents. Ranger was buried with Michael at the Brigadier General William C. Doyle Memorial Cemetery, and was sent off with the highest honors. Stephanie didn't flinch, she didn't cry, the only sign that Joe had that she was not okay was the tight grip she had on his arm; as though his arm was the only thing keeping her upright. She accepted the burial flag and then clutched that tightly.

Joe drove Stephanie back to her house after the funeral and watched as she succumbed to the sobs that only devastating loss can wrench from a person. He did just as he had before, sat next to her and put his arm around her shoulders.

When she had calmed down after another hour of crying, he said, "You are not alone to deal with this. I am here, and I don't plan on going anywhere. Any time you need to talk, Stephanie, day or night. Please, call me. If you just want someone else around, or you want to get away, call me."

A breath shuddered out of her, before she replied, "Thank you, Joe. Thank you for still being my friend, even after all the crap we went through together."

He had nowhere else he would rather be. He wanted to fix the mistakes he had made, and he wanted to tear down the barriers between them. They were mostly his own fault, anyway. He knew how she was, who she was, before he went beyond friends with her all those years ago. From the incident when she was six until just now, he hadn't been a very good friend to her and he was lucky that she even still considered him such.

There was no reason for him to have acted the way he had, except that as a child he didn't know much better based on example. Sure, he had a working knowledge of right from wrong, but it was skewed by the emotional and physical abuse his father doled out. As he got older, his moral compass seemed to get even more skewed and it wasn't until he joined the Navy he truly understood all the wrong he had done Stephanie. All the ways he had traumatized her. So when she ran him over with a Buick, he figured he deserved it. When he had the chance later on to fix the mistakes, she didn't readily bring them up and he was too much of a coward to admit he was wrong.

When she wasn't so grief-stricken from the past two years, he would maybe venture to bring that all up. Or maybe he wouldn't, and would instead focus on fixing his more recent wrongs. Regardless, he was determined to be better, to do better, and to fix this mess he had made.

 **A/N: I know very little about military funerals and the processes there. Everything I wrote I got from a very quick google search. Thanks for all the wonderful reviews so far.**


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